1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a transmitter and transmission method employing a multi-carrier transmission technique, particularly a digital wavelet multi-carrier (DWMC)transmission technique utilizing real coefficient wavelet filter banks.
2. Description of the Related Art
Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is frequently adopted as a conventional multi-carrier transmission method, for example, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,442,129. In the OFDM transmission method, discrete Fourier transform (DFT), particularly fast Fourier transform (FFT), is adopted as a modulation/demodulation method. In addition, in FFT-based OFDM, generally speaking, ramp processing is adopted, which makes the time waveform on a leading edge of a frame (preamble) smooth in order to prevent the waveform from distorting in a transmission channel or in hardware such as an amplifier.
Recently, wavelet-based OFDM has been proposed to replace FFT-based OFDM as a modulation/demodulation method in OFDM transmission because FFT-based OFDM has basic weaknesses such as poor resistance to narrow band interference, poor resistance to internal interference, and low transmission efficiency because of the necessity of a cyclic prefix. When ramp processing is performed in wavelet-based OFDM, the length of the preamble data in the wavelet-based OFDM is longer by at least (2k−1) symbols (k is an overlapping factor) than the length of the preamble data in the FFT-based OFDM if the wavelet waveform, as it is, is used as data of the preamble. The greater the length of the preamble data, the more the redundancy of the data increases. Accordingly, the length of the preamble data is required to be as short as possible. While auto gain control (AGC) is performed in a receiver by using a wavelet waveform without ramp processing, convergence speed of the AGC becomes an issue because of the complexity of the wavelet waveform.